Down by the Water
by Matoankix
Summary: In a club on Spectra, a woman sings a song of failure and longing to the child she had once. A slight insight into Zoltar's past.


The woman in the red dress - a woman in her mid-forties to early fifties, regarded as quite a beauty in Spectran culture - walked the floor with quiet grace and a smile; a stage presence cultivated from years of singing for others. It had been her passion for quite some time now... no, it was more like an escape. A distraction. Something to fill the empty space that had been gouged out of her heart that day.

The music, a slow electronic tune and a steady beat, began to play; a song that reminded her eerily of her life. It was usually a song that struck too much of a nerve to sing in public, but there was a certain guest among the few faces in the quiet, smoky club who she wanted to hear this...

Even the tune made her think of the girl; the beautiful blonde girl she'd found and taken in almost twenty years ago now. She'd been living rough, exiled from her parents' home for daring to voice her problems with the Spectran government; though with the government being a notorious hive of corruption and secrecy, the woman didn't blame the girl. She thought she had every right to voice her opinions... especially when they were true. Being a government secretary, she knew all about it.

Blinking herself out of her thoughts, the woman silently swallowed, before she brought the microphone to her red-painted lips and began to sing.

_I lost my heart_  
_Under the bridge_  
_To that little girl_  
_So much to me_

_And now I moan_  
_And now I holler_  
_She'll never know_  
_Just what I found_

And what had she found? Well, that was simple... She'd found evidence that her daughter was a shapeshifter; someone with special powers who could change their form. It seemed, at first, like the young girl liked to change herself every now and again to fool other people... But then she revealed that it wasn't a conscious decision. Her body just shifted from one gender to the other, once every year... Another reason her parents found her a liability to have around. She was always upset, never allowing herself to be too close to another, always on guard against imaginary - yet very real - dangers.

_That blue-eyed girl_  
_Just ran and ran_  
_That blue-eyed girl_  
_Became blue-eyed man_

As the woman in red sang and swayed to the beat, her eyes travelled over the patrons of the club; an older, rotund man smoking a cigarette up right by the stage... he was a fan, to say the least. Further back, a young couple smiled close to each other and locked lips, clearly more interested in each other than the music. And right at the back, shrouded by smoke and only vaguely illuminated by the dim lights, was the man she wanted - needed - to hear this, who was watching her carefully over the sunglasses covering his face... if he even was a man, it was hard to tell.

_Down by the water_  
_I took her hand_  
_Just like my daughter_  
_Won't see her again_

No, she wouldn't see her again. The thought always brought a wracking pain to the woman's heart; and it had done, every day for the past twenty years. She wouldn't see her baby girl again and it was her own fault...

The bastard government weren't content with establishing their planet as an enemy to all things good; oh no, they had to go one step further and demand that her daughter be turned over. A shapeshifter who wanted to work against the government could not be allowed to run free, they would say over and over again...

The light in her life was stolen from her that day. Her little darling's screams still echoed every night in her dreams... But she was taken away, to be raised in the government's land, under their law, to make her think 'properly' like a 'real Spectran girl.' All that because they were scared of the little girl who just wanted to watch the fishes in the river...

_Oh, help me, goodness_  
_Come through the storm_  
_I had to lose her_  
_To do her harm_

_I heard her holler_  
_I heard her moan_  
_My lovely daughter_  
_They took her home_

It wasn't her damn home! Her - or his, whatever form she happened to have landed in that time - home was with her parent... her real parent, not those monsters who'd left her alone! By now, there were tears in the woman's eyes, but the song wasn't done so neither was she.

The man she'd been watching - the new ruler of the Spectran government, who'd overthrown prior rule out of hatred, so said the history books - looked ever-so-strange out of costume; and even more strange not being ten years old and female. He watched the woman with a strange kind of smile on his glossy pink lips, but when he shifted his glasses down to see her properly, there was a darkness to them.

The woman's eyes were still teary, but she couldn't help but smile. Her beautiful daughter Zoltar had grown into the man who ruled all Spectra...

As she repeated the ending line to the song in a low whisper - _little fish, big fish, swimming in the water, come back here, man, gimme my daughter _- she couldn't help but remember those days down by the water; and she was also making a plea to her precious one to come back to her... It seemed like he'd learned to control his gender changes and settled as a man, but that didn't matter; son or daughter, she just loved Zoltar...

Zoltar must have noticed her pleas through the music. His smile seemed to grow wider, though those blue eyes were just as cold and unforgiving...

And then, in a move that spoke more than a million words could and a swish of blond hair like spun gold, her dearest stood up and walked out of her life.

* * *

**A/N: **The song used is 'Down by the Water' by PJ Harvey, with a few lyrics changed; I don't own that, Battle of the Planets, or any of the characters involved apart from the singer, the big fella and the kissing couple. =P


End file.
